


(unsaid)

by cian1675



Series: (re - published) [3]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gang World, Bad Decisions, Deals, Guns, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lies, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mob Boss Kyungsoo, Non-Linear Narrative, Prostitution, Sickness, Violence, no actual gun violence, not described just mentioned, nothing terribly graphic but beatings in general, sebaek as brothers even though they are not blood-related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 09:13:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11986743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cian1675/pseuds/cian1675
Summary: Here, in the midst of gaudy velvet cushions, the all-consuming background of smoke, deals and lies, Baekhyun inhales the overwhelming scent of deceit and realises with a start that after just two months, he fits right in.Sorry, he wants to say to Kyungsoo beside him, but doesn’t. Kyungsoo won’t know what he’s sorry for anyway.[Or, the AU where Baekhyun - ex-odd job worker, ex-prostitute, current who-knows-what in a gang - has his own reasons for getting close to mob boss Kyungsoo.]





	(unsaid)

**Author's Note:**

> Rated Mature for the themes in general. Please read the tags, I have tried to warn for as much as I can, but if I missed anything, feel free to let me know.
> 
> [Originally an Infinite fic but the very initial conception of this story was from Exo, specifically the Lotto!era, so I decided to republish it in this fandom as well.]

**-01:03:08**

A veneer of thick plasticky prettiness over everything gritty; young nubile escorts, under the table deals. A cover of suffocating pleasantries over drugged liquor; smooth blatant flattery, illegal transactions. Here, in the midst of gaudy velvet cushions, the all-consuming background of smoke, deals and lies, Baekhyun inhales the overwhelming scent of deceit and realises with a start that after just two months, he fits right in.

His lip curls up, he scoffs.

Kyungsoo casts a sideway glance, no other wasted movement. He doesn’t need to; that simple movement is enough to command attention. Baekhyun sits up a little straighter, schools his expression into something a little more neutral.

Sorry, he wants to say, but doesn’t. Kyungsoo won’t know what he’s sorry for anyway.

 

 

**-2159:37:01**

“You smell hideous,” someone spits and Baekhyun doesn’t know who. Can’t see past his eye swollen shut, the other good one mere centimeters from overly expensive snake skin boots with pointed tips.

Try not to smell like crap when you do manual labor and odd jobs shuffling through the city’s warehouses left, right and centre, he wants to say, but decides to save his breath. He needs the air to continue breathing past lungs heavy, laden and bruised. It’s a labored effort, made difficult with more kicks on his trodden body, all his possessions long seized from his inadequate pockets.

“You still owe us, brat,” another grits. This time, Baekhyun only grunts when the beatings come, wondering in a detached part of his mind if he would have gotten into this mess if he hadn’t been this desperate.

 

 

**-732:00:05**

A little sidling up to Kyungsoo’s side, a slight tilt of his head so his cheek rests on Kyungsoo’s starched blazer. Kyungsoo doesn’t react, but Baekhyun watches him finish up his deal faster than he usually does. The bald pudgy man across the table, sunglasses useless in the dim room, an exhausting parade of bodyguards behind his ostentatious stance doesn’t look too pleased. But when Kyungsoo plasters on his coaxing smile, lays on the flattery thick, he’s sufficiently placated and goes off without too much fuss.

“What was _that_ about?” Kyungsoo asks later, breaths only slightly hitched as his hips work up a punishing rhythm behind Baekhyun.

“Nothing,” Baekhyun gets out behind involuntary gasps and grunts, the corners of his eyes wet. It hurts, it _hurts_ but it’s also what he wanted. What he needs. His chest is pressed into the mattress, his cheek against the pillow, and underneath, his fingers’ scrambling for purchase when he closes his fist around a small gun.

Fuck, he’d forgotten it was there. The cool metal on his skin is an untimely jolt of reality. A cruel reminder of _why_ Baekhyun’s really here, what he’s really here for. He doesn’t realise he’s pulled the weapon – _his_ weapon, the weapon _they_ gave him – out from the cover of the pillow until there’s a short pause, a stuttering of Kyungsoo’s hips when the rhythm falters, and Baekhyun thinks he’s slipped up, caught. But then Kyungsoo digs his fingernails into Baekhyun’s hips, shudders, his whole chest heaving against Baekhyun’s back, and Baekhyun realises with relief that Kyungsoo hasn’t noticed. He comes back into himself with a choked cry a short moment later, released but not freed. The gun is quickly pushed back to its previous hiding place, a reminder of the shackles and chains around his feet, before Baekhyun turns so Kyungsoo can wrap his arms around him, another entrapment but less unwelcomed than the first one.

 

 

**-1742:46:03**

“Where did you get this?”

Sehun’s voice is weak, but filled with suspicion nonetheless. Baekhyun spoons the porridge, still warm and raises it to Sehun’s lips.

“Don’t worry about it. Just eat and rest up.”

Sehun’s face is pinched, he probably has more to say, questions to ask about food, fresh instead of leftovers and Baekhyun’s visits, fewer yet bearing gifts neither of them can afford. But then a hacking cough takes away his words, and all Baekhyun’s left with is a boy he had called his brother since they found each other on the streets years ago, a body next to him, frail and jerking perilously at each wrecking cough.

“Are you okay?”

“Peac –” is all Sehun manages to get out before he wheezes again.

Peachy, Baekhyun thinks, filling in the words where Sehun is unable to. It’s a lie, but not a malicious one.

 

 

**-1822:15:02**

A measured looked, scanning up and down his cheap robe, loosely tied around his used body. It’s not the dirty look old men give him day in day out, but Baekhyun feels an urge to cover himself regardless, the sallow eyebags, purple hickeys and angry red twists of fingers pressed too hard into skin that he can’t wash away no matter how hard he tries. The man in front of him at the moment is fit and compact, much younger than the usual clientele here despite his pomaded hair swept back from thick eyebrows and his hard, drawn expression. Maybe it’s supposed to make him look tough. He does have two bodyguards behind him after all. All Baekhyun thinks is that he looks tired. Or maybe, Baekhyun’s projecting.

“What’s your name?” is the first thing the man asks later, when they’re alone in the room, robes shed and hair mussed up. It’s an easier job than Baekhyun’s previous one, clears his debt faster if only the interest doesn’t go exponentially up. His work seems never-ending, his debt ever growing, and Baekhyun’s exhausted to his bones. He wipes the sweat from his brow and shutters his eyes close when his body is used, pushed to the limits even though this man is gentler than the rest before him. In a way, this new job is about the same as his old one, tiring, mindless, except it’s also not just that. It’s easier, but it’s also much harder.

“…Baekhyun,” he remembers to say much later, when they’re spent and tangled in the sheets, because why not. It’s not like he needs a fake name when he won’t see this man again. But Baekhyun’s wrong. Wrong because this man called Kyungsoo, tailored jackets more expensive than the rented room Baekhyun lives in with Sehun, quiet words filled with more secrets than Baekhyun has himself, comes back for him many times after.

 

 

**-02:00:07**

“Do I need to remind you your deal is up in 2 hours? Kill him, end your debt. If not, what you owe us goes up double. And if you fail, let’s not forget that we have… a little letter here. A letter of our agreement with your signature on it, and let’s just say, Kyungsoo isn’t known for being a nice mob boss, especially not if we let him know a little _traitor’s_ right under his nose.”

The voice is staticky across the disposable phone. Distorted, harsh, but Baekhyun hadn’t expected anything else. He wants to forget, erase all the prettily coated untruths and half-lies he’d whispered, wheedled, to get himself here by Kyungsoo’s side but it’s hard to when he’s getting calls shoving his own deceit to his face, his selfish motives threatened to be exposed at every turn. The worse thing is, it doesn’t even matter now. Nothing really matters now when he’s alone. Baekhyun squeezes heavy eyes shut and nods, an utterly useless motion. The line goes dead before he says anything else.

 

 

**-341:09:06**

A dark bedroom is what he expected. What he hopes for, soothing stale blackness to drown in after the antiseptic politeness of white coat doctors with masks. Instead, Baekhyun gets Kyungsoo, back ramrod straight on the foot of his bed, a small metallic gun between his hands.

I can explain, is what Baekhyun would say. _Should_ say. But not today. Not after he’d just cried himself dry at the cold lifeless body of his only friend, the sole reason Baekhyun’s even here, why he has that gun to begin with and why he had borrowed from the wrong people to begin with. _He_ was the reason Baekhyun’s here, and without Sehun, Baekhyun’s lost.

So, he walks towards Kyungsoo with no clear motive in mind until he finds himself picking up Kyungsoo’s calloused hand still around the gun, and then Baekhyun guides it to his own chest. The tip of the gun fits right against his sternum, cold and unfeeling, and the tremor of his own hand goes with the steady thump thump thump of his heart.

“Ever played Russian roulette before?”

Kyungsoo’s eyebrow twitches. A heartbeat passes.

“Is that what you’re into?” he comments drily.

No, Baekhyun can say. But he doesn’t. He just peels the gun off Kyungsoo’s hand, pushes him down onto the bed roughly. Their teeth clash, and Baekhyun’s lip gets cut somewhere in between, the iron tangy on his tongue. Later, sheets pulled messily in the throes of frenzy, clothes strewn across the floor, the gun lies forgotten on the side table.

 

 

**-1587:57:04**

“Barely enough again.”

Baekhyun cowers, prepares for the hits to his stomach, the stomps on his back. He didn’t have enough this week even though pretending to enjoy old men touching him pays him more than lugging construction rebar around. It’s never enough. It’s never enough. Nothing’s ever enough. He’s crouched, braced for the impact but it doesn’t come. Instead, someone yanks off the silver bracelet Kyungsoo gave him just earlier, hums.

“Ooh, look at this.”

Is that bracelet worth anything, he wants to ask, but doesn’t. Maybe he can manipulate them into thinking it’s worth something even if it’s not. Except, it turns out the goons’ interest isn’t in the bracelet as much as the insignia etched into it.

“How do you know Kyungsoo?”

The glint in their eyes scares him, but hushed whispers of potentially being freed from his debt lures Baekhyun in.

“What would you do to pay off this debt.”

The one time he shouldn’t have said a word, he does.

“Anything.”

 

 

**-00:00:09**

A hand wraps around his wrist when he tries to excuse himself at midnight.

“Where are you going?” Kyungsoo asks, voice calmer than the strength in his grip implies.

“Restroom,” Baekhyun lies, before Kyungsoo lets him slip off. He goes into the room he’s been using as his bedroom the last two months, slides his hand under the pillow for the gun. It’s heavy in his hand, fully loaded the night before. He has been thinking about this. _Had_ been thinking about this. He can’t run anymore. There’s no other way.

Baekhyun runs his fingers over the etchings, clicks the safety off and slowly, mind hazy, presses the barrel to his chest, a little to the left. His vision narrows down to the steel grey against his black shirt, senses dulled but for the soft scrap of metal against cloth. His mind quiets until it’s just the roar in his ears, the frantic beats of his heart counting seconds until he finds the courage to do this. To end this. It’s how he doesn’t notice he’s not alone until it’s too late, until he hears Kyungsoo say, very softly right behind him, “Don’t do it.”

Baekhyun freezes.

Then, without reason, a laugh startles from his chest, scratches itself out around the indent the unfeeling barrel leaves on the underside of his skin, harsh and delirious.

“I was supposed to _kill_ you.”

The words fall from his lips without preamble, a sudden confession perhaps long overdue. He doesn’t know what’s the point of saying it now, if ever, but maybe he needs to. Or maybe he’s hoping someone else will pull the trigger since he hadn’t managed to.

“I know,” Kyungsoo says eventually, voice utterly even and matter-of-fact. It’s Baekhyun who’s surprised then, jolted from the calm detached place his mind has gone to. He finds himself laughing again, loud and disconcerted, fingers quivering with the weight of the leaden metal in his palm, chest heaving with each joyless broken sound coming from his throat. The laughter keeps coming, soaking through his skin, seeping tears from his eyes until he’s bent over, choking off what could be sobs or ugly horrid laughter.

When he finally calms down, the gun is in Kyungsoo’s hand somehow, safety back on, and for some reason, he doesn’t look like he wants to end Baekhyun. Instead, there’s a deep furrow in his brows, lips drawn with words unsaid. Baekhyun’s mouth opens before he knows what he’s doing.

“I’m sorry.”

I had reasons, he almost wants to say, but doesn’t. That would just sound like excuses. But then Kyungsoo grips his chin, finger digging into his cheek, tilts his head to face him.

“Don’t just say sorry. Tell me _why_.”

And just like that, with Kyungsoo’s searching but not malicious gaze trained upon him, Baekhyun finds himself uttering words previously left unsaid.

“I had reasons. Selfish reasons, of course.” He laughs, and it’s all without humour, but Kyungsoo’s listening still. So he says, “It started after Sehun got sick.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and concrit are always welcome :)
> 
> P.S.: The numbers on top of each part are hours:minutes:seconds. The seconds are numbered according to which happens first i.e. 01, then 02, 03 and so on.


End file.
